White balance ethics

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience
that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy
our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

With film colors reproduce exactly as they appear in real life.
With digital you can alter the colors your camera outputs by
setting the white balance to different temperatures. What's the
best way to reproduce accurate colors? Ethically you can't brighten
up a photo and saturate the colors to make the scene look better
(not in journalism anyway). My job is to reproduce that one would
have seen if they had been there themselves. National Geographic,
for instance, only allows their photographers to alter colors
slightly (ie, contrast and color correction)... but if you dont
make your skin tones to the right CMYK numbers you get hounded by
the prepress department to do so to make the paper more beautiful.
What's a guy to do? If a guy's standing under a blue light, they
look blue... and therefore should be printed as blue in the paper.

Can you just set a neutral white balance temperature in one
situation (say a flash bounced off the roof of an all white room)
and use that in all instances to make your CCD react to color like
film or does the CCD see light differently than film. Help me out
here, please.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Click to expand...

--

In fact, nothing is color accurate, films, photo paper, photo processing equipment, digital sensors, digital printers, and lastly, and one of the worst…your eye.

When I shot film I would select different films based on how they distorted color. One film with warm tone for portraits, another leaning on the green side for landscapes. You can also significantly change color by controlling the exposure, less will saturate for example.

The lab is FAR from accurate. In fact they were a big pain. I used to do some commercial pictures of electronic printed circuit boards. The people in the lab had no idea if they were blue or green boards. If there are people in the picture, they can come up with a decent guess. I used to have to shoot a gray card and tell them to adjust their equipment to that photo and leave it alone for the rest.

Mark

Mark Rogers
http://www.pbase.com/lila161

Melanie Kipp said:

Forget cloning, filters, etc.
I do believe the original post refered to white balance....

Click to expand...

So I guess the discussion should be whether there should be criminal penalties for displaying a tungsten lit scene as one lit by florescent... ;o)

--
bob
http://www.pbase.com/bobtrips
New Gallery - Bangkok Turtle Temple
pictures from Thailand, Myanmar(Burma), and Nepal

Melanie Kipp said:

Forget cloning, filters, etc.
I do believe the original post refered to white balance....

Click to expand...

OK, then.

Does anyone here doubt that public opinion of an individual can be manipulated by the color rendition in a portrait?

Example: If I shoot an individual uncorrected under flourescent green light, I submit that people will have less confidence and trust in that individual than if I were to properly color balance the scene.

So the question (and I obviously think it's a GREAT one) remains:

Is there an ethical obligation to render a scene accurately?

p

--
http://www.paulmbowers.com

Yeah Bob, that's my take on it.
grin

BobTrips said:

Melanie Kipp said:

Forget cloning, filters, etc.
I do believe the original post refered to white balance....

Click to expand...

So I guess the discussion should be whether there should be
criminal penalties for displaying a tungsten lit scene as one lit
by florescent... ;o)

--
bob
http://www.pbase.com/bobtrips
New Gallery - Bangkok Turtle Temple
pictures from Thailand, Myanmar(Burma), and Nepal

Click to expand...

--
Please visit me at:
http://www.caughtintimephotography.com

Let's see. Since the typical outdoor sunlit scene has a light range of about 10,000:1, film has a transmission density range of about 1000:1 and paper has a reflection density range of about 100:1, how do we accurately portray a scene?

Seems to me that "accuracy" is in the eye of the beholder.

First of all- you dont make color mistakes with film.

Secondly, I dont take my film to the lab.

Third, what I meant by film reading colors correctly was that the silver crystals would read "consistantly" (i suppose thats a better word for it). If your in the daylight it would read about right. That's what it's balanced for. If your inside it would read yellow or green. That color that the crystals are reading is in fact the actual color of the light. Your eyes dont precieve it as well as the film but you can still tell if you try. Walk out side on a dark night and look into a brightly lit shop window. You'll notice that it looks more green than normal.

Anyway, I'm just looking for consistancy with my digital images. Making a white shirt look white isn't always right. If your standing next to a lamp that white shirt is going to look yellow to the eye but when you set your camera to tunsten wb. it will make it read artifically white.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Jonathan Kardell said:

Again, if perfectly accurate
rendition distracts from the point of the picture, it is actually
less accurate.

Click to expand...

A nice concept, but wrong. I dont think that reproducing the scene perfectly is necessary. Altering the scene to make it something that it's not, however, is unethical.

Making the sky more orange than it actually is at sunset may look pretty but it's not the reality of the situation. Making a sky darker blue in the daytime beacuse your camera washes out the sky's highlights is acceptable beacuse that's essentailly what you would have seen had you been there yourself.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Burning and doging is acceptable as long as it's not done to the point of chaning the reality. This, of course, is subjective.

And National Geographic magazine does not allow their photographers to alter colors accept for the sake of improving reproduction. In fact they describe it in detail in last months issue. The editor explains quite clearly what they can an cannot do.

Everything were discussing is subjective.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Paul M Bowers said:

So the question (and I obviously think it's a GREAT one) remains:

Is there an ethical obligation to render a scene accurately?

Click to expand...

Definitely. But as often as not, you're going to have to use white balance manipulation to get closer to that goal. And the real issue is making sure the public respects news organizations who have credible editorial standards rather than letting everything slide down the slippery slope of "what looks best" or "what sells best."

Arguing that it is easier to manipulate photos kind of skirts the real problem with "news" in this country in that most of it isn't news at all. The shift in what television news has covered during the last 30 years that I've watched it is huge and completely away from being informative or really even objective. Most newspapers are very profit driven as well. (Though to hear tell about the heyday of Hearst, many newspapers have always had a heavy editorial slant. And I'm sure the types of photos and subjects, and even technical treatments, were manipulated back then too.)

-Z-

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience
that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy
our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

Click to expand...

Al,

Remember that someone else on the scene looking at the same thing from a different angle in relation to the sun or light source is going to see it in a different "white balance" than you see it.

And on top of that, your paper may print it in black and white, which certainly looks different than the way anyone on the scene saw it.

I can understand your concern if your photos were being used for evidence in a legal trial. Other than that, no reason you shouldn't be sleeping like a baby.

Paul M Bowers said:

Is there an ethical obligation to render a scene accurately?

Click to expand...

Of course there is!! No question. Not so much my concern for the public's opinion on individuals but consider this for a moment...

Your set out to take a picture of a sun set so they have something pretty to put on the front page (lame but it happens when news is snow). You take a picture of the sun reflecting off of the water with some ducks or something in the highlights. Now, if you use film the colors will appear more natural than if you used... say... a tungsten white balance.

If you oversaturate the colors and bring out the oranges you may end up with a very artistic looking attractive image... but that's not what journalism is. If you want to do art, submit your stuff to a gallery. If you want to tell the story of life in your community then you can go altering your images to make them something they aren't.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

... how you could call yourself a journalist and knowningly alter your images for the sake of making the more attractive.

When you print an images in B&W, it's understood that the world from which you pulled the picture wasn't black and white as well. Joe Schmoe consumer is going to know that it was at one point a color image but was printed black and white. On the other hand, Joe may not know if you change the color of a sunset from red to more red (and i use that example beacuse it's teh easiet to understand though probably not very applicable).

You cant controll what someone else may or may not see from a different location... and quite frankly it doesn't matter. All you need to worry about is reproducing what you are seeing. Do that and you have made a fair an accurate image.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

If your taking pictures under a flourescant light, peoples skin tones are going to appear green. In fact, if you look closely before you snap the image, people are going to look a little more green than they would if they were standing in the sunlight. If you are standing on the shaded side of the building, you are going to see a lot more cyan though you may not realize it. Your eyes aren't correcting the colors, you just aren't aware that they're there.

With film, the cyan will be there when you look at your slides. It may be more than what you saw but that can be corrected. With digital, often times those colors that were there are "corrected" right out of the image by the camera's wb. setting. You can put them back with photoshop but they aren't going to be as close to the reality of the situation becaue you are just relying on your memory to get it close.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

With b&w, it's understood that the image has been altered by subtracting the colors.

A color image that has been manipulated to change the colors to something they were not is not so easly disregarded as false.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

I would not feel good about running that image in a newspaper. It's a great shot, but it's not journalistically accurate.

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Keep your eye out next time you see something similar to what you described. You will indeed see that their face is in fact blue. Simply because you dont concisously see something doesn't mean it's not there.

You eyes and mind dont change the colors, you just lean not to notice them so readily as you do when your looking at a picture.

Granted, film amplifies the problem. Green and orange coloring with indoor shots is exagurated reality in many cases but not entirely of it's own making. The colors are there to begin with.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

I dont have the manual for my camera so I've got to ask you folks. How do you set the D1 (not x or h - though I dont know how much difference there is) to shoot raw? I thought RAW was just shooting with the quality setting on "High" instead of Fine. Fine produces a JPEG, and High produces a TIFF. Are you saying that Raw produces some other kind of file? I really dont know anything about it.

Maybe I'll run into work today and dig up the manual.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

ib1yysguy said:

... how you could call yourself a journalist and knowningly alter
your images for the sake of making the more attractive.

Click to expand...

I think what people are trying to say to you is that both film and digital (as well as pen and ink) present the opportunity to mis-represent reality.

Even before you snap the shutter button you choose to distort reality by where you stand, your choice of lens,... The reality of your eyes is different from the reality of the person standing a few feet away.

As a reporter/witness you need to do as good a job as you can possibly do to preserve the image in a non-distorted manner. Learn to use your tools in as well as possible to do your job.

If you feel that your image doesn't quite fit reality as you remember it, disclose that to the viewer.

Cut back on the caffeine after dinner.

--
bob
http://www.pbase.com/bobtrips
New Gallery - Bangkok Turtle Temple
pictures from Thailand, Myanmar(Burma), and Nepal

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience
that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy
our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

Click to expand...

I've been reading this thread for about an hour now, and the reply postings have been very enlightening to say the least. I want to offer one small bit of food for thought:

I'm a photographer...but I am also color blind (not mono-chromatic, but much less sensitive to the red and green spectrum than normal). Listening to all of this talk about white balance in relation to "accurate" renditions of a scene, and color's relationship to ethical representation, seems a bit out of line...

I endorse the idea of representing a scene/event as close to "accurately" as possible, but this begs some serious questions. And my final, un-encumbered view, is that "accurately" is way too subjective of a goal. There's a reason we have a "free" press...It is to eliminate this sort of "weighted conscience conundrum" that we are discussing now.

The photojournalist is the individual responsible for making the decision regarding accuracy, since he or she is the person experiencing, at that moment, what is being recorded. Therefore, it is a matter of personal conscience and freedom for a photojournalist to decide what is accurate. I'm not advocating full artistic license to photojournalists in reporting (as that would cause obvious problems, many of which have already been discussed), but certainly license to reproduce an interpretation based on technical limitations of gear is necessary.

I point out that I am color blind because my "accurate" perception of a scene/event is 100% of the time going to be different in regards to the colors surrounding that event than another individual who is also there. But, that would not detract from my experiencing the scene/event in a subjective manner, nor would it render my experience as "inaccurate".

The idea that ANY method of capture, be it slide film, negative film, a CCD (video or still), or any other medium for that matter, is accurate and in line with your other five senses is basically absurd. What about the sounds, the smells, and the feeling of the shoes on your feet at the time the photo is taken? What about the emotions of the individuals partaking in the event? Isn't the simple act of attempting to capture those emotions or feelings of another person's experiences and compress them into a photo as much of a falsification, in so far as you are trying to express them through a metaphorical visual mode of expression?

I think color balance is the least of the worries a photojournalist should be focused on in attempting to "accurately" express the impact of an event. The infinately more important, and perhaps more subtle, responsibility should be on representing the emotions and intentions of the parties involved in a subjective and un-biased manner. And personally, I don't think the color "balance" is a necessary component to that end.

So, have a hand in color balancing the final output (if you can)...and if your employer requests that you "doctor" the photo to make it more Visually appealing, then draw the line according to your own conscience. If it means losing your job, then make that decision. My assumption is that a single method of standard white balancing your gear is not going to solve your problem anyway, as the results will invariably not live up to your editor's idea of "beautification" in all of the photos you take.

my two (well, maybe 50) cents...

Michael Wise
The Vinyl Image

You could just use manual white balance once, and never adjust it (if you want consistency)

The problem is that Digital Cameras tend to be much more sensitive to the lighting temperature, so images will look too red or too blue compared to a film image.... (or am I wrong here? will someone please comment on this?)